1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to storage device management. In particular, the present invention relates to tracking node paths and devices in a storage cluster.
2. Description of the Related Art
A cluster management service uses tape libraries in a tiered hierarchical storage system to provide low cost storage to customers. The tape libraries may contain a hundred or more tape drives connected to multiple hosts in a storage cluster. There could be a thousand or more data paths amongst these drives within the cluster. The paths appear and disappear over time as the fabric changes and drives can be added, deleted, replaced and sometimes even fail.
When customers have to configure a large tape library for use with a data storage management system in a mover-node cluster, it can take considerable time to configure all of the possible paths to all of the devices on the nodes in the cluster. If changes are made to the fiber channel storage area network (SAN), all those paths can change, requiring reconfiguration. Configuration of tape drive clusters can cost large amounts of time and resources.
What is needed is an improved method for configuring clusters of tape drive libraries.